Weaving – Page 4

August 15, 2009 by Tien Chiu

goldenrod shawl

This came off the same warp as the silk/cashmere jacket and the garnet shawl, and shares the same draft as the garnet shawl. (I liked the pattern so much I wove a second one!)

Weaving this was a real challenge – for some reason, one of the shafts in my loom was floating, so there are many irregularities in the cloth. For this reason, I didn’t show it at CNCH (my regional weaving conference), but I still think it’s pretty.

Computer simulation of the pattern, generated by weaving software.

The dyed cashmere/silk weft yarn, shown against the silk warp yarns.

The shawl on the loom.

A photo of the shawl before wet-finishing.

August 15, 2009 by Tien Chiu Leave a Comment

six shaft huck lace shawl

This was one of my very early pieces, woven on an eight-shaft Baby Wolf during the four months or so that I owned it (I upgraded shortly thereafter to a 16-shaft Leclerc Diana). It’s a six-shaft huck lace pattern, drawn from the book Handwoven Laces, woven in a 2/28 nm white silk.

I wove two of these shawls, one for B.’s mom and one for his sister.

A computer simulation of the shawl pattern.

A closeup photo of the finished shawl.

The finished shawl. Sadly, it's difficult to make out the pattern, as the white all washes into a single blob.

August 14, 2009 by Tien Chiu Leave a Comment

silver fox

This shawl was woven using four strands of a lovely gray cashmere/silk blend, loosely twisted together, as warp. Weft was the same yarn, dyed black. The pattern is an advancing twill, either taken directly from, or greatly influenced by, an article in Weaver’s magazine (I think it’s also in Twill Thrills: The Best of Weaver’s).

This shawl was woven as a gift for a dear friend of mine, who has become a Tibetan lama (very rare for a Caucasian woman) and now lives in India, with only occasional teaching tours to the U.S. Sadly, I have no more photos of it – it was one of my favorite pieces when I wove it. I still think it’s beautiful, and I hope she’s enjoying it.

August 1, 2009 by Tien Chiu Leave a Comment

advancing twill flowers

This was a very early piece – my fourth weaving project, in fact! – and is the “Advancing Twill Flowers” shawl published in an issue of Handwoven Magazine. The only changes I made were to weave it up in 2/28 nm silk and 2/28 nm black cashmere, instead of sewing thread (which increased the width from scarf to shawl), and to shift the colors very slightly.

All the colors in this shawl are hand-dyed (by me). I had a small apartment at the time, and didn’t have the space to store lots of colors, so I bought a lot of white yarn and dyed it to my needs. I still dye all my own yarns, preferring the greater range of colors I can get by dyeing my own.